igab to a banquet and murdered him over the wine-cup? Have
you forgotten, Alemanni of the Ebergau, who submitted to them on
condition that you should live according to your own laws, how on the
smallest pretext, they had your free men scourged by their lictors? Do
you still recollect, Alemanni from the Breisgau, how they asked a
peaceful passage through your country, and then encamped near the
sacred grove of the goddess Ostara, asked permission to visit the aged
priest of eighty and his great-granddaughter, the girl of sixteen, in
the grove (it was a General and one of their shaven priests, with a
hundred warriors), and inquired what was your most sacred thing? And
when the maiden unsuspiciously showed the sacred bronze vessels which
the gracious goddess had once sent down to you on the rainbow, how they
suddenly seized both, and the Christian priest, before the eyes of the
unarmed people, shamefully profaned the sacred vessel; how the General
slew the venerable priest and dragged the young priestess away to
captivity and disgrace, and how their warriors set fire to the sacred
grove?

"Do you still remember, men of the Alpgau, how, in the midst of peace,
a centurion dishonored your Count's young wife by her own hearthstone,
so that she hanged herself by her girdle?

"Have you forgotten how often they have bound our girls together, yes
and our boys, too, like beasts of burden, by their long locks, and
driven them forth to a life of disgrace from which the pure gods of
Asgard turn their faces, crimson with shame and wrath?

"You have _not_ forgotten these things! I hear it! I see it! Well then,
do as I advise: _Take no prisoners!_ Kill them all! Do not spare one;
disdain all ransom. Let the whole army,--leaders, horse and foot,--be
dedicated to Odin and to Zio. You will: I see it! Then repeat the words
after me and swear:

"To thee, Odin, doomed,
And to wrathful Zio,
Be all who live within the camp
And on the rocking galleys.
Soon will ye bathe in blood,
O gods so mighty,
From ankle to knee!"

Swinging their weapons in frantic excitement the gathered thousands
repeated the terrible oath.

"I will dismiss the army at once; only hear one thing more--your Duke's
vow. The many thousand mailed men who broke into the peaceful districts
captured one single prisoner, a defenceless woman, a merry little
maiden. Many of you, I think, know